(I'm snipping a lot of what Ray & I wrote just to focus on a few points. This does not mean what is not quoted is not important, only that I have thought of responses to what I have quoted.)
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Geoff Burling wrote:
[snip]
First, let me define one point here. When talking about any issue, I think it is fair to say that the viewpoints expressed will come from one of three groups:
*Professionals -- by this I mean scientists, scholars, medical doctors, priests or pastors, accountants, &c. These are the people whose lives revolve around researching, formulating & expressing opinions on issues.
So does their income.
You touch on a point as old as Plato, who reports how Socrates criticized his fellow philosophers for teaching in return for money. Socrates, one of Plato's contemporaries responded that he thought that philosophers had as much right to eat as anybody.
Frankly, I feel that the argument that corporations or businesses buy experts to support their POV all of the time has gotten worn to being threadbare. No inteligent professional is going to sell her/his credibility for a paycheck; what they are going to do is find an employer whose POV most matches their own. Much in the fashion no one who has doubts about the infallibility of the Pope will become a Jesuit. To ignore this is to promote an _ad hominem_ attack in disguise.
Maybe I've become a little more cunning in the last few years, but when people start stating slogans, buzzwords & irrelevant facts when they should be explaining the facts & their logical relationships I begin to suspect that even they know their arguments are weak at that point.
*Informed non-professionals, or amateurs -- these are the folks who don't make their living from researching, formulating & expressing opinions, but do so on their own dime. The professional groups sneer at their opinions, & condescendingly call them "amateurs" -- forgetting that the original meaning of the word comes from describing people whose work is a labor of love. Much like all of us on Wikipedia.
*Uninformed non-professionals. These are the people who aren't informed about a given issue, & tend to repeat what they hear without any significant understanding. This is the realm of Urban Legends, Superstition, Crackpot Theories, & similar ilk -- but it is also fair to say all of us in one topic or another fit into this group. Can we be sure that, at any given moment, we could defend our views on every conceivable topic? About Abortion? About the existence of God? Concerning Israel? Whether or not Democracy is the best form of government? If Tolstoy is a better author than Mickey Spillone?
There is no single process to distinguish original from crackpot thinking. A fair review of an original thought requires a serious amount of thought for which few of us have the time. If the particular thought threatens long held prejudices, we are also unwilling to spend that time when we already have an easy response.
For the purpose of Wikipedia, I think we have 3 useful rules to keep most of what I believe all of us can agree on is crackpot thinking. Two of them have been mentioned from time to time:
* Wikipedia does not accept original research.
From what I've read of Wikipedia, it seems fair to say that what we are
trying to do is report & summarize in a useful fashion other people's writings. And one test that I've seen repeated on this mailing list (well, okay, I've repeated it once or twice) is the insistence on materials that have been published -- preferably by a commercial publisher, but at least some entity that insists that a third party has reviewed the manuscript for things like accuracy, importance, grammar & spelling.
If someone can get her/his manuscript published about their theory concerning Special Relativity, the Kennedy Assassination, or the Atlantian origin of the Egyptians, then that argues it has enough public interest to warrant at least a stub on Wikipedia.
* Wikipedia does not accepts vanity contributions.
I'm not quite sure why, but some people believe that a decent write-up on Wikipedia will boost their careers. Or provide them with fame. IMNSHO, if an article on Wikipedia will have that much effect on your standing, then you really aren't all that important.
And I suspect that by excluding vanity contributions, we will also discourage the kind of person who insists on submitting her/his own, er, idiosyncratic viewpoints.
The third rule, I propose, is this one:
* All contributions to an article must be clearly relevant.
The reason for this point comes from a recent exchange I had with a possible kook contributor over the article [[Sea Peoples]]. For reasons I still don't understand, he insisted on inserting irrelevant material about David M. Rohl's Revised Chronology into the article.
(Not to say there shouldn't be some mention of Rohl's theories on Wikipedia; but his proposals concerning a Revised Chronology for Egypt, ancient Palestine, & the rest of the Near East are better located under specific articles such as Shoshenq I & Ramesses II. Rohl doesn't even mention the Sea Peoples in his book, _Pharaohs and Kings, a Biblical Quest_.)
I guess I offended him by constantly insisting that he provide proof of his theories, because he stopped contributing to Wikipedia a week ago. I still don't understand why he considered it not only a fact -- but an essential fact -- that the Sea Peoples spoke an Indo-European language.
[snip]
Too often on Wikipedia, it appears that we are looking for some kind of ex cathedra decision of what the professionals think about an issue. We want the professionals to say, "This is truth." Except for those who want to be able to say, "The professionals think A, but they are wrong & it is clear that the truth is B." But as I reflect on how knowledge is achieved, this kind of paradigm rarely occurs.
[snip]
I remember a saying from the early 20th-century physicists: "The only way to get a new theory accepted is to wait for all of the opponents to die."
It was Max Planck:
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents.... Its opponents gradually die out and the growing generation is familiar with the idea from the beginning.
Thanks. I was quoting from memory.
[snip]
Response on or off the list is welcome.
If we're going to elevate the discussion it has to be on-line. :-)
Well, when I think I've been rambling more than discussing, I'd rather have that fact confirmed offline, please. ;-)
Geoff